@jenvalentino @AlecMuffett @nytimes @gabrieldance While I do appreciate the reporting on this issue, not to mention your much longer history of work, which I have long followed with interest, but I have to agree with Alec that the editorial tone in this particular article is dangerously unskeptical. To cite a quick example:
@jenvalentino @AlecMuffett @nytimes @gabrieldance "It was unclear whether photos and videos of abuse were actually more prevalent on Facebook or were just being detected at a high rate." This is a rather breezy dismissal of what is the overwhelmingly clear explanation for the figures the pro-surveillance folks are citing here.
@jenvalentino @AlecMuffett @nytimes @gabrieldance The entirety of the trend that the surveillance folks are pushing here are quite clearly the product of increased sophistication in fingerprinting and flagging systems being adopted and operated by companies that are, at the same time, increasingly the center of the internet.
@jenvalentino @AlecMuffett @nytimes @gabrieldance It is not that there is an explosion of criminal activity: there is little evidence for that, beyond perhaps an increase in yoy number of connected users, rather there is an explosion of detection. But that is being intentionally misrepresented by the AG as cause for alarm.
